Nothing but Blue Skies

16

He awoke alone in the cell, filled with dread. He very slowly allowed a few details to seep in, wincing at each one. He sat up and gazed at the drain in the floor. A few apologies in order, he thought, one or two at least. A glance at the high window and he could see it was dark. He thought back: drinking started in the morning, must’ve been hauled in around midday. He went to the door of the cell and called out. An officer he didn’t recognize came to the door. Just then, he remembered his remarks to Sheriff Hykema. The present policeman looked like an old pensioner with remarkable bags under his eyes.

“You ready to go?”

“It’d be nice.”

“Sheriff said to send you home when you woke up.”

“What time is it?”

“Few minutes after eight.”

That seemed like an especially odd time to Frank. He must have slept all afternoon.

“When did the other guys leave?”

“A long time ago. You slept right through it.”

He felt he was rising from the dead. That was about as much loss of control as he could stand. The officer opened the cell door and Frank followed him out. He had a few things returned, watch, wallet, car keys. “Where’s Sheriff Hykema?”

“Gone home.”

“Where’s he live?”

“Quartz Canyon.”

At Frank’s request, the officer wrote the sheriff’s address down on a scrap of paper. “Your stay will cost you a few bucks, one way or another. You mind stopping back and taking care of it?”

“Not at all. You have any idea how much?”

“Maybe a hundred bucks,” said the old policeman.

Frank knocked on the front door of the sheriff’s small lilac-surrounded house in Quartz Canyon. He could hear a great horned owl in the woods nearby and there was a stirring canopy of stars that seemed just higher than the house itself. Frank craned his head back and stared at them when the door opened. A sixteen-year-old boy with a blue and orange Mohawk haircut answered the door. Under this warlike hairdo was the face of a child.

“I’m Frank Copenhaver. Is Sheriff Hykema in?”

“Yes, you want to come in?” Frank followed the boy into the hall, where he saw the sheriff’s gray uniform jacket and three or four Stetson hats. “Dad!” the boy called. In a moment, the sheriff appeared in his stocking feet and introduced Frank to his son Boyce. Frank and Boyce shook hands gravely.

“Come on in,” said Sheriff Hykema, and Frank followed him into a nearly dark den where a baseball game was on television. Hykema picked up the channel changer and muted the game, then gestured for Frank to sit in one of the deep chairs that faced the television. Hykema sat in the other.

“How you feeling?”

“Better than I deserve. I’m afraid I remember a couple of things I said to you last night —”

“This morning.”

“Right. And I sure apologize.”

“Don’t give it a thought,” Hykema said. “Let me see if they’re going to call that foul.” He turned the sound back on for a moment, then off again.

“Well, I am sorry.”

“I hear that sort of thing every day.”

“Well, I wish it hadn’t happened, but it did.”

Hykema gave him a long look, disinterested, almost scientific in its detachment. “You must have had a lot on your mind.”

Frank was able to meet his gaze. They both seemed to drift off on very different tracks, lit by the pale green image of the baseball diamond on television. It was very quiet. Suddenly, the sheriff seemed to come back into focus. He clapped his big hands down onto the thick fabric of the arms of his chair. “Copenhaver,” he said, “that’s the first time we’ve had you down at the jailhouse. I don’t know what your problem is, but when folks start appearing there, it usually ain’t an accident. A big portion of them keep reappearing until something real bad happens and then it’s too late to go back to where the problem started.”

Frank felt a ticklish surge to be receiving sincere advice. He could tell that his gratitude seemed a little out of place to Hykema, or exaggerated, further proof he had lost track of the normal. “I like to think it was an isolated event,” he said.

“I like to think it was an isolated event too. But a lot of times it isn’t.”

“That’s good to know,” said Frank. Everyone was so helpful.